Audio and transcript from the February 16th, 2022 installment of “Conversations with the Coop” with Alexander Guy, the Growth Lead at Zerion.
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Crypto Texan: Hello everyone. Welcome to Conversations with the Coop. This is where we source questions from the Index Coop community to gain insights from today's leaders in crypto and DeFi. I'm your host Crypto Texan. And today on the show, we have Alexander Guy, who is in charge of Growth at Zerion. Alexander, thanks for being here with us today.
Alexander Guy: Thanks so much, Texan. I really appreciate it. And happy to be here.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. So let's just get started with your story Alexander, what's your background and how did you get into crypto and DeFi?
Alexander Guy: Good question. I imagine when you do these podcasts, you probably get a wide variety of answers, but I wonder if recently as more and more people have come into this space professionally, if you have more sort of like variance in the way this all starts out. For me, I very much have a Web 2 growth and marketing background. So I've worked in a number of different industries, a number of different stage of startup, but mainly in the tech Web 2 kind of space. I've been in that for about 10 years. And I guess like about a year and a half, two years ago, right when the world was coming to a standstill, I started getting into an NFT game called Sorare.
Having worked in like tech and kind of been around the space for a while, I was like aware of crypto and Ethereum and then Bitcoin. And I even read a little bit, read a few books about them, but I'd never really, I don't know, I guess this is like super naïve now, but like at the time I kind of viewed like crypto as almost like a sub-genre of all these like cool tech startups that were coming out at the time. So like similar to, I don't know, maybe like AI or something like that. It was like sort of a, in my head at the time, like a kind catchall term that sort of summed up a sub-genre of like the startup industry and space that I was in. But once I really started to get into Sorare, which if you don't know, it's a fantasy football game where like you buy cards that are NFTs, they have different Rares represented in the game, but then you compete for Ethereum and card prizes on a weekly basis.
And so like for me, this, I guess was like a sort of a light bulb kind of moment. On the cards themselves, you can see the Etherscan address. And so I click on this Etherscan address. I start looking into this. A really great friend of mine works at Ledger. And given that he was a somebody who I could turn to and talk to a lot about this, I started talking to him about Ethereum and NFTs and just getting more and more excited about the space. And from there, at least for me, I think this is probably true for a lot of people, especially new entrance into this, relatively new entrance into this space. Like NFTs in general, kind of acted as like a Trojan horse for me, where I was super excited by this. I started getting into some other Discords like God's Unchained and Forgotten Runes Wizard's Cult, and things like that.
So I started like really getting into NFTs and they were kind of like the root into, I guess, a more nuanced understanding, hopefully more nuanced understanding of crypto and Ethereum ecosystem, which obviously is represented in DeFi. And then I think another question that people ask me a lot is about the transition from Web 2 to Web 3. Basically once I had some NFT assets and I started thinking, in my collection, I guess, and I started buying Ethereum and participating in some of the more well-known DeFi protocols like Aave and Compound, and like thinking about out how to do like various yield farming techniques. I missed DeFi Summer, because I was sort of still lagging behind on the whole, like what's going on in DeFi space, but I started using Zerion pretty much once I had some assets that I needed to manage.
And after that I started sort of communicating with the team via Discord. And then in sort of about this time, last year, I saw that they were looking for a head of marketing and I just started interacting with the team on their Discord. And yeah, here I am. So it started with NFTs, ended up with DeFi, I guess is a good way to put it.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. And you're right. I have seen and heard of a bunch of different backgrounds of people who come into this space. And I think that's just because this space caters to a lot of different types of people, right? I mean, you've got your TradFi finance people that come into this space, you've got your Web 2 people who are more technologically savvy, and then you've got, more from an economic and philosophical background, right? From just like a macro sense, you get those people coming in, and now with NFTs, just as you said, I feel like that's brought in a whole different type of person into this space. And I think that's just going to continue to grow. So, I don't know. What do you think is the next type of person that's going to get brought into this space?
Alexander Guy: Well, first of all, it's a really good question. I'm sort of fascinated by the fact that the diverse groups of people that you named are kind of like all motivated by some version of the same philosophical point of view or maybe narrative, which is a lot about taking back control, correcting the wrongs of Web 2 in some ways and how user data and user personal information is exploited. And I think that that kind of narrative fits very nicely into a group of people who I think are starting to really sense the potential with this space. And that's like creators of any kind. I mean, music NFTs are still very much at like the beginning, I guess, but you see artists, photographers, musicians, like I say, increasingly realizing that NFTs offer them a way to not only reap more actual financial benefit, Spotify's recently come under a lot of fire for a number of reasons.
But obviously one of the ones I'm talking about is the actual model they have for paying their artists and NFTs obviously offer an immediate solution to that problem for musicians. But I think you see a lot of creators basically finding the confidence and the, I guess like the financial freedom through NFTs and crypto to actually launch their careers, which is fascinating to me. And you don't need, it's not like every NFT project needs to have some kind of thriving Discord with thousands of members or something like that. You see people just very humbly launching like a photography collection via Mirror and all of a sudden having enough money to actually make a career as a photographer and start getting going really in that space. And so for me, I think creators are certainly a key demographic of people that are starting to grasp like the power of what we're all so excited by.
I think probably very similarly, and this is not at all like a hot take. I just think like we're still so early in the, like the gaming kind of sector and like how gaming and the intersection of like an NFTs, crypto, digital assets in general interact within a game context. There's obviously so many different permutations that a game can take. It could be a fantasy sports game like I was talking about with Sorare or like a total immersive world, like Decentraland. But I still think that we're very, very early in that story and like gamers are really primed on mass to come into this space. At least that's how it feels to me. I think that's, again, like I said, not exactly the hottest take in the world, but it seems really relevant to me and I just like want to stress it because I feel like we're so early.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. I completely agree with you there. And we've seen a lot of push back too from the gaming space related in NFTs, but I think those are also the same people who are just against micro transactions in a video game in general. And I totally understand that, right? Like the people who just want to have a video game just to play beginning to end, without having to pay to 100% a game or to complete a game. And I understand that, but yeah, there's definitely other ties. I think it just, the blockchain space, has a way to develop a completely different type of game where you can't take ownership of assets. And it's not necessarily infringing on the legacy games that are still great and fun, but that can be a completely different conversation. But we are here to talk about Zerion. So you kind of touched on how you got to Zerion. So can you tell us what is Zerion and you're on the growth team, and just tell us what that role entails at Zerion as well.
Alexander Guy: Sure. Sure. So I'm head of Growth at Zerion. And I guess like the easiest way to think about Zerion is actually to kind of tell a story of the company and the product itself. Zerion started very much with a mission of sort of taking all these disparate and very spread out areas of like DeFi and the Ethereum ecosystem and trying to create like one single place where you could manage and see all of your assets. So across multiple wallets, across multiple networks or protocols, basically the vision was to create one central like, central is a tough word in this space, but that's really what it is. One place where you can view all of your assets and like see their performance over time. So basically the product is non-custodial. And the first thing that happened was we wanted to create, or the founders wanted to create a place where like somebody could just come in, connect their crypto wallet, and like immediately get insights into their portfolio.
So they built a number of really interesting features that I think helped along those sort of like taking control or understanding what's happening across your crypto footprint, for example, like a real-time profit and loss graph that shows like your portfolio over time and really detailed near real time push notifications and like alerts/history that allow you to like really see like, okay, that swap I did is like actually gone through. Oh yeah, I received some airdrop that I didn't know about. And that was kind of like the first stage, I guess, of Zerion. And that was in 2017, late 2017, 2018, which obviously was a tough time for the market. But quickly after that, the team realized that what we needed to do actually, like if you can see your portfolio, you obviously want to trade and like do things with it, do things with these assets.
So we added like simple swap functionality to start, which now has become kind of like a DEX aggregator of DEX aggregators. So right now, if you can execute swaps and trades via Zerion, and we have integrated with like some of the major DEXs out there, like 1inch, Uniswap, SushiSwap, Uniswap v3, 0x, basically what we do when you execute a trade through Zerion, we'll find, through all those DEX partners, we'll find the cheapest trade, like the cheapest option for whatever trade you want to do, and then like give you the option to choose that DEX. So basically it ensures that you can get the cheapest trade at any given time. Obviously, if you have rewards or your whatever, a PSP holder or a 1inch token holder, you can choose whichever network. So you don't have to choose the cheapest one, but we'll default to that kind of at the start.
And then, okay, so trading's there, you've got your whole portfolio history and everything about your DeFi assets mainly. Basically what we started then to think about was like how to incorporate NFTs into this story. And so recently we've added a number of different bits of functionality to sort of position your NFTs, just alongside your DeFi assets and your crypto portfolio. So once you connect your wallet, assuming you can also now see your NFTs there as well. We have the ability to filter by like floor price and last price. You can get an idea of like what your actual value of your NFTs are. You can see detailed attributes. We work with OpenSea and Rarible on the API side, to make sure that you have all the attribute data there. And you can also send them to different wallets.
And so that was kind of the, I guess like the most recent phase of Zerion, but the big focus for us over the last, let's say two, three months really, probably longer than that, but certainly in the public perception is we actually added support for six additional networks as opposed to just Ethereum. Previously in Zerion's history, we only supported Ethereum assets, but now we support assets across a total of seven networks. And that's soon going to go up to 10. So we're really trying to increase the, sort of the multi chain functionality and the multi chain use cases that you can experience with Zerion. I guess that's pretty clear about the product.
What we do on the growth team, what I'm trying to lead on the growth team is we want to try to figure out the, I guess, the best way to get both the brand of Zerion out into the, sort of into the space, particularly with a new crop of people, like a new addressable market that's been coming in over the last couple years, this would be the sort of NFT crowd. I think within the DeFi Degen sort of space, we have a pretty solid brand awareness. But within a lot of these new people into the space, we sort of are like, maybe not as well known yet. And so we're focused very much on driving brand awareness, kind of across to cover that cohort of users too. But we also are trying to figure out ways to build out true community and create value for the people that are already on the platform. We released our own NFT in July last year with the intent of trying to build out like a crop of loyal users.
And so we basically run a number of experiments across basically any marketing channel you can think of, any growth channel you can think of, including the product to try to drive engagement and really help users get the most out of Zerion.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. So what, and you touched on this a little bit, but what do you feel like is the true target market for Zerion? Like, are you all looking to onboard kind of the newer Web 3 users? Or are you trying to focus more on, I guess the DeFi degen, OG market?
Alexander Guy: I think a real like... I should have said this in the product description or sort of the product overview, but we are available right now on web, mobile, iOS and Android, and also along the macOS desktop, and a key focus of ours from the very beginning has been to like, sort of take like a very complicated, very, I don't know, difficult to understand world, which is like defying crypto sometimes, and try to make it like as easy to use and understand as possible. And so undoubtedly that USP, that experience that we deliver is really great for new people to this space. But we kind of like have this funny requirement, I guess, in that like, we can't get truly anybody new into this space right now, because we don't have a wallet.
So like to use Zerion, you have to connect your crypto wallet. So we already assume that somebody has interacted with the environment a little bit, that somebody has actually gone and developed some sort of idea about the types of assets and things they want to invest in on their own. So like basically we're solving this one problem of having them be able to view it all in one place and then do great things at afterwards. But quite soon, we're going to be able to look really at these, maybe not necessarily new, new, new, never heard of crypto, never thought about it before in their life. Sometimes I like to talk about them as advanced beginners. So like, they know what gas is, they're aware of like why it's hard to track all this stuff, they've had the experience of sending money to the wrong address and then losing it forever because you didn't switch the right network in MetaMask. These are like relatively advanced problems, but there still are probably early in their story.
So I'd say this advanced beginner crowd is probably like the easiest way to talk about it. Having said that, we've really invested for a long time in sort of like a, how do I say? Almost like a motivational message for the team, especially recently of trying to be able to deliver like, tracking and trading for any asset, any chain on any device. And this is clearly a message that experienced very, very, maybe not Degeny people, but certainly people who've been in this space for a while. It resonates with them because a huge problem is like, oh, that asset isn't there. Or, in MetaMask I can manually add it myself if it's not listed already and all these kinds of problems.
So I think that we probably are versatile enough to address a couple of different audiences, but I think for us, the focus of really great, simple user experience naturally yields us to addressing maybe a less Degeny, but still sort of dipping their toe in type of user. I mean, that's not like a user persona description that you're going to see in like many marketing or growth textbooks, I don't think. But that's kind of how I like to think about it.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. Well, the Web 3 crypto space is a very different space. So I think that's probably why you wouldn't see that in your traditional marketing growth textbooks. But do you think that you all will have plans to integrate your own wallet as well in the future onto the platform?
Alexander Guy: Well, we figured out some teasers about it. It's definitely in the works for us. I can't give away any deadline or really any features, but we're definitely working on it. It's an important step for us I think, because of the fact that what it allows us to do, as I mentioned, is like really target somebody who maybe isn't again, just starting out their crypto journey, but certainly to create an experience where someone can come right into Zerion, create their wallet and immediately get started. It removes that requirement for us to target somebody who's like already, I don't know, has a ledger, or is using WalletConnect or something like that. Like, we can like get around that now. And I think that's an important step for us.
I also think it's an important thing, like in terms of what our overall mission is, I don't think I've said this at the time, but we kind of like to think about ourselves as like mission control for Web 3. Like that's sort of like, I don't know, maybe that sounds like really spiny, but basically what I mean is that we believe that someone should be able to have everything within Web 3, like within their fingertips, if they're in Zerion. So like you should be able to look and explore different NFT collections, you should be able to then jump over and check out some of your favorite asset prices and how they're doing, you should be able watch wallets of famous or like relatively famous crypto people. Like, you should be able to do all that stuff within a few clicks in a really easy to use interface.
And so for us, the wallet really allows that whole story and vision to like kind of come full circle, I guess. And so, like I say, I can't give away any deadlines on dates or anything like that. Any developers on the call might kill me if I did, but it's definitely something we're working on. And it's important to our overall strategy going forward.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. And I feel like being a wallet or a wallet user interface for new entrants can also carry a lot of responsibility. And I'm just thinking about how many of those spam or malicious token that I've had sent to my wallet over the years, especially in low gas fee environments, like Binance Smart Chain or Polygon. And I think this is kind of where the Coinbase wallet falls short. And I think Coinbase wallet is almost becoming a wallet that a lot of users are using first because Coinbase is a name that they know and understand, but I think that's where it falls short in the sense that it does just kind of show all of those tokens that could be fraudulent or malicious, right? I don't know. I'm just wondering, is Zerion doing anything to help protect new investors in the space from scams like that, like on the education side or I guess on the UI, UX side as well?
Alexander Guy: I think it's a great question. And again, a problem, I think many people on this call have experienced before. And so for us, it's a huge priority for like trust, like for our users to be able to trust what they see and trust what's happening, whether that's the history, the transaction history that I mentioned earlier, or the tokens themselves that are listed there. Basically we introduced, I think it was like about a year ago, if I remember correctly. I'm a little soft on the actual dates, but we introduced about a year ago, the notion of like a blue check mark for assets. And basically once an asset that you see in Zerion is listed in at least three token lists, it will be like verified by us.
Basically that means that we can sort of validate that this isn't some kind of rug pool. This is a legitimate project and this is a token you can trust. So that kind of started, I guess, that whole journey towards making what people see in Zerion more trustworthy or like trust-able rather. Recently, we've added a number of different ways to hide, or like remove the sort of like small balance of tokens from your overall portfolio view. And this is again, towards like trying to restrict the idea that somebody could think there's some kind of token there that actually is either fraudulent or is some kind of scammy thing. And I think it's, for us, like a very important priority going forward to continue to find ways to make sure that users can remove them or report them.
I don't know if we have anything added other than like, on the actual like, not within the product itself or the UX, but we have a really active Discord group with some fantastic people on the support side. And when users report scammy tokens, we have a really great track record of like getting rid of them, doing everything we can to make sure that there's a way of communicating with our users, that this potentially is dangerous. And actually we... Like many, I think DeFi projects out there, we have scams, like people creating fake token claim pages for Zerion or yesterday, actually there was one that was like, claim some Zerion NFT, and these are like really convincing pages.
And so we've actually faced this ourselves. And we always try to be really great about communicating with people that this is not something that's coming from us. And it's a really important thing for us overall. And something that we, as I say, have experienced like kind of close to home, I guess, because people keep trying to create these ways to scam our users or anybody interested in Zerion, like out of their money, which is obviously terrible. I'd say that as we go and build out the wallet and figure out what that's going to be and look like at Zerion, the idea of figuring out more and more ways to make sure we're protecting users is pretty central to what we're doing.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. I've noticed that in my personal experience too, that one of the more difficult things when on-boarding a new person into Web 3 and crypto is telling them, "Hey, don't give out your private key to anybody or your word phrase. And if you're in a Discord, no one is ever going to DM you." Like, no one ever wants to give you free money. So don't believe it, right? It's like, one of my friends saw that I was tweeting about this new NFT project. And he was like, "I want to do this. I want to be part of the mint." And I was like, "Okay, join the Discord, do all this, set up your wallet." And then he reached out to me, he goes, "Hey, someone from the team reached out to me and they said for me to get on the white list, I have to send them my passphrase." And I was like, "No, God. No, please don't do that. Don't." I was like, "Stop." So, yeah. That's one of the toughest things, I think. That was just kind of a side note.
Alexander Guy: Oh, but it's so challenging, right? Because like, they're clearly... It's kind of like a, there's clearly, in this industry, so much that can be gained by being early, right? Like, we're so early. That sometimes I think bad actors can like take advantage of that urgency. And because people are trying to make sure that they're early to something, because obviously that's how they're going to get the biggest benefit, there's really like a, sort of a toxic kind of combination of things going on there that can make it really hard to spot a phony setup or something. I should say that like one feature I can talk about with the wallet because it's related to this whole passphrase idea.
So one of the things that I think is quite confusing, especially when you're just starting out in this space is like, okay, what is this thing and why am I not supposed to share it? Like, how do I share it, but also not store it anywhere? There's a lot of like, around the whole like creation of a crypto wallet. Like, I think a lot of things that, especially new people to this space are like really, maybe not put off by, but certainly like a little bit intimidated by, and what we've been trying to build on the mobile is almost like a little bit of like an educational tutorial about like what this passphrase thing is, what it means, what you should and should not do with it. And so it's almost like a little dialogue while we're creating the wallet. I think I actually tweeted out not too long ago, a little preview of that sort of first phase happening.
And basically what it does is it's like, this is your passphrase, you shouldn't share it with anybody ever. If you do, you could lose all your money. There's a lot of language that tries to, as you say, educate people to know how to handle this stuff. And the other thing we did, I think it might actually be getting like shortened a little bit, but what I had to do also was this idea of like making sure people actually write down their passphrase by like asking them to say like, okay, what was like the eighth word in your passphrase? Click it here. What was the third word? Click it here.
And if you don't click the right one, it's like, "Hey, go back and actually write this down because it seems like you didn't write it down." We may have shortened that process. I can't remember what the latest look and feel actually, how it actually functions, but we certainly have tried to build education around this concept into it, because if we ever do start attracting and trying to address like really, really new entrance to the space, it's important that there's this educational layer. Because as you say, it's really easy to get scammed.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. And some of the biggest anti crypto, anti Web 3 people on Twitter that I follow and you should follow because it's good to get those different opinions. One of the things they always say that I agree with is they say, no one wants to remember 12 to 24 words to get access to their money. And I'm just like, "Yeah, they're right." That's... Right?
Alexander Guy: They're probably right.
Crypto Texan: Anyway, so let's kind of do some comparisons right now just for people who aren't that familiar with Zerion, like how would you compare Zerion to MetaMask? Like, how do you all differentiate yourselves from competitors like MetaMask or like the urgent wallet as well?
Alexander Guy: Sure. So on the MetaMask side for us, the mobile app and the mobile user experience, it's a major differentiator for us. We started, I guess we were one of the first DeFi apps with a mobile presence at all. Certainly one that's across multiple app stores. And in general, the user experience that we have there is like, I really think that we have an excellence iOS engineer in particular, but our Android team is fantastic as well. And what they've done is really tried to make this like a super, super smooth, really pleasant place to be. And I think that like anybody who's used the MetaMask mobile app, there's a lot of great things about it, but I think that the user experience side, the look and feel, like how it feels to be there is pretty challenging.
On the website, I think one of the most frustrating and sort of confusing things about MetaMask is like, when you're trying to do things across multiple chains and you're constantly having to change networks or you're trying to execute a transaction and you forgot to change the network because you were on Mainnet and now you're on Optimism, and so like, what Zerion... Like, basically we don't force you to change your network when you're in the web app, until you actually have to do something. So you can like browse, go around and everything like that, all you want without changing network. And it's only when you actually go to execute a transaction that you might need to change your network with us. And that's kind of like, I don't know, I'm mentioning a lot about user experience and usability, but that's like clearly a place that we're trying to differentiate.
We think that as new people get into this space, the level of user experience that's going to be demanded is going to be higher because there'll be less tolerance for sort of like a funky or confusing, or just generally broken user experience. And so for us, that's like, I think a really big differentiator. I think another one... First of all, the way that MetaMask prices their swaps is pretty aggressive, I think. And Zerion, for a while now has not charged on Mainnet. Like, we don't charge any additional fees on top. This is something that... We surveyed our users recently and most people thought we were taking some kind of additional fee for all this DEX aggregation stuff I was talking about before, and we don't actually take any fees on Ethereum and Mainnet.
And so I think that the fee piece is important because it, obviously like when you're already executing a transaction that costs, however much it costs with gas, to then ask users to pay like almost 1% of their transaction again, it's like pretty aggressive. And I think it's an important place for us. So on the Mainnet side we're not doing that kind of exploitation. I guess the other thing that's really important too, that I think is very related to like what people are going to increasingly look to do, I don't think that in the future people are going to care so much which network they're using something on, or they're doing something on, they're just going to do the cheapest, fastest thing possible. And I think with MetaMask, it's just still very hard to get a clear, complete view of what my portfolio actually looks like.
And Zerion allows you through multiple wallets, you can have like a whole portfolio of you. So you can see the total of your footprint across multiple wallets, like in end networks. And it makes it very easy to get an actual representation of what's going on. So I guess like, user experience, pricing, in general, like exploitation, I'd say, and then also the fact that it's just a little bit easier to get a clear view of what's going on. And I guess I should definitely talk about NFTs because I think that the way that we're approaching NFT collections and NFT, like how people look at, use, manipulate and track their collections is like really important. Because I think when you use a lot of major wallets out there, it's kind of hard to like really actually get a pleasant view of your NFTs. I think Rainbow wallet has done a decent job of this, but beyond that, the way that people look at and view their NFT collections is still pretty broken. And we've tried to invest a lot of time in making that experience a really enjoyable one.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. And Alexander, you mentioned about not taking fees on top of the swap feature. So how does Zerion make money? Like, how is Zerion monetizing this platform?
Alexander Guy: Currently, it is through like slippage, which I guess you could say is like a... Slippage is how we're doing it currently. I think that is relatively limited in terms of the amount that we're able to collect from that. So it's not exactly like making anybody millionaires, like the way that you see MetaMask and others providing financial statements, but slippage has been the way that we've made money so far.
Crypto Texan: Okay. And are there any plans maybe to create a Fiat to crypto on-ramp on Zerion? Because I think that's just such a huge unlock for people just to not have to go through a centralized exchange and then send it to a wallet. Do you all have any plans there and where's that on the road map?
Alexander Guy: So we have integrated partnered with Ramp Network and MoonPay. And so you can already on-ramp through... I'm a really big fan of Ramp Network. I think they're great. And the MoonPay team as well has really been fantastic with us. So we currently work with Ramp and MoonPay. So if you're on the web app, there's a little icon in the top right corner of your screen. It says buy crypto and you have a couple different options and you pick the one which works for you. And then you can go up to the races. In terms of building our own on-ramping, I don't think that's on the road map. I think that the Ramp team's doing a good enough job that we can probably, and MoonPay are doing a good enough job that we can keep working with those teams.
But I totally agree with you that like, especially for like a newer audience, like the fact that they don't have to do all that hassle, that is kind of a, as I say, like a little bit off-putting for someone who isn't familiar with the space, is really important. And so like for us, we've had that future. I guess as soon as we, when I think about it, as soon as we added the true swap functionality, we also were trying to figure out how to on-ramp into crypto via Zerion. So you can do that right now. And I've actually done it a bunch of times, including when I was first getting started with the product.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. And I don't know if you know this or not, but does MoonPay or Ramp Network, do they allow for Fiat to Polygon directly? Because that was a big thing that Dharma had for a while. And then Dharma just kind of like fooled everyone by getting acquired.
Alexander Guy: I can't remember if Ramp has Polygon-
Crypto Texan: Yeah. That's-
Alexander Guy: No, they have.
Crypto Texan: Okay.
Alexander Guy: They don't have polygon. But I don't know. I bet you they're working on it because you're totally right, that the sort of absence now of Dharma in the space in the wake of OpenSea acquisition kind of leaves a gap for that. I'm not sure about MoonPay. I wouldn't want to speak out of turn on MoonPay.
Crypto Texan: Okay. And yeah, let's talk about NFTs a little more and just kind of thinking of NFTs more as financial assets or how they operate along, I guess crypto assets or DeFi in general, how is Zerion viewing that? And do you see any potential or are there any protocols out there that you all are looking at that could maybe allow someone to use their NFT as collateral to take out a loan or, I don't know, just broadly in general, what are your thoughts there?
Alexander Guy: So I think that there's... I think Chris Dixon said this, that like crypto is math-backed currency. And I think that like a, actually a pretty great way to think about NFTs is to think about them as like community-backed currency. Because there's clear... Whether it's a game or just a profile picture project, there's clear evidence that the community sees legitimate value in these things, pretty much across the board. And so we kind of look at them and I think anybody who's been a collector of anything really kind of sees NFTs along those same lines, I guess. And so for me, I think it's important... Like, one of the reasons why we wanted to give someone a complete 360 view of their entire crypto footprint or like their Web 3 footprint was like, I personally don't draw many lines between the DeFi assets or the DeFi tokens that I buy and the NFTs that are in my collection.
In fact, the gaming industry is a great example of how those things are often very, very blended together with like... I mean, I own like some Decentraland tokens, and then they... Obviously I could buy Decentraland NFTs within the space as well, and then go and play the game and earn more MANA. And so I think that the... There was this belief when NFT started emerging was that they were very, very different and distinct than like your DeFi portfolio, right? And I think that's one reason why it's been hard for wallets or for portfolio trackers like us to sort of display those things simultaneously. But I think that increasingly it's just becoming clear that people treat them as like one and the same and like people want to have, I don't know, it's kind of like the real nature, the true nature of a crypto wallet, right?
Like, you want it to have everything, you want it to have your Sorare card collection, you want it to have your ENS domain, you want it to have obviously all your DeFi tokens and things like that. And you kind of just want to carry it around with you. And I think that the fact that NFTs have clearly emerged as a powerful financial force, now of course, it seems obvious, but I think there's been some... I think there was this idea that they were like two separate spaces and the convergence of these over the last, like year or so, I guess in particular has really been exciting to see. So like, we've sort of taken that approach at Zerion just to say, you should be able to look at these things pretty much within a few clicks of each other to get an idea of how much you actually have held up or have locked into the crypto space.
In terms of like the collateral side of things, I think that that kind of use case is only going to become more popular. We aren't currently working with, I don't know, I shouldn't say that because our integrations team is pretty active about exploring different relationships with different protocols and stuff. But I just think that finding ways to actually physically, or maybe not physically, but literally bring NFTs into sort of like the "financial space" of Web 3 is just going to become more and more common, because you could see the value of these things, not just stabilizing, but often just steadily growing in the same way that any asset or any token would.
And so the fact that you can't use a... I see somebody on this call, the fact that you can't use an mfer as a collateral is sort of crazy, right? Because it's an asset that clearly appreciates. And so I think that probably the hard thing right now is figuring out which project and how to value them I guess over time, that it seems like such an obvious use case to me that increasingly there will be people and companies and protocols trying to explore this challenge.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. And even in the real world, I work at a bank and we've definitely done loans where we've taken fine art as collateral for the loan, right? So just based on that, I've seen this happen in person, right? And it feels like it's just inevitable on the DeFi, NFT integration side.
Alexander Guy: And I agree. There's actually also like, I think even beyond the, I don't know if there's a bank or a protocol out there, it seems like just a really, really smart business decision to start doing this because the brand equity that some of these projects, like I see also a World of Women on this call, and the brand equity that World of Women has would bring so much by way of press and publicity and also just like interest from that community if like all of a sudden somebody was like, "Oh yeah, by the way, you can put your World of Women up for collateral here."
I just think that it's just a really good business decision because these can communities move towards the ways that they can utilize the NFTs that they own. I think like Bored Apes and the fact that you retain commercial rights is obviously one way that the use cases of these NFTs emerges and evolves, but obviously the fact that maybe like World of Women can act as a collateral asset would be like really, really exciting. And clearly there should be protocols looking to explore this. I'm sure there are, I'm just not familiar with any off top of my head.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. I'm not familiar with any either. So when the Zerion app is valuing the NFTs that are in the wallet, are you all utilizing the OpenSea floor price? Or how are you all valuing those?
Alexander Guy: It depends. We use both OpenSea and Rarible depending on what the asset is and which one is more accurate, but we basically have pretty good relationships with both of their teams to make sure that information is up to date and accurate. And actually what we're really trying to figure out right now, I can give away a little bit on our NFTs road map. We're also really, really, really trying to put Rarity into this because like anybody who collects NFTs knows that there's like clearly a Rarity multiplier that happens if you have one of the most... The traits are the rarest, like if you're in the top whatever, thousand or, the rarer your NFT is, the more valuable it is, of course, which right now the floor pricing and even the last price doesn't do a great job of predicting.
And so we're really trying to explore different ways to add Rarity rankings and Rarity into the overall price or the overall value that you're seeing for your NFTs. I think we're not too far away from that. And so that's probably going to come out within the next couple months. Our team's pretty excited by that one. It's just a matter, I think of prioritization, which is a common refrain. I think at the Zerion team, we're trying to ship fast. But the Rarity concept and like having that factor into the valuation is something that's coming shortly.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. I totally agree. I mean, it's inevitable. So there are a lot of Web 3 wallets in the space and also protocol similar to, or apps similar to what you all do. And we've all heard about the curve wars, but what about the wallet wars? Wallet wars, is that a thing?
Alexander Guy: It's definitely a thing. I think that there's actually a number of people talking about... I think this is actually a term that's been used that, the wallet wars. I think that maybe, it was Ric.eth wrote about this in relation to like the browser wars recently, I think, and that was his analog, was like thinking about browsers and wallets. I think that's a comparable, like a good comparison, mainly because there's a lot of people fighting even to define what a crypto wallet is. There's a lot of misinterpretation. Like, Zerion currently, in its current form is not a wallet, but I have seen and heard people multiple times at events, at conferences, in demos and things like that, refer to us as a wallet.
And so like, how is it possible that the first step with Zerion is to connect your wallet, that people would then go and call us a wallet? And so I think that there's... Currently a lot of what the wallet wars, if we can call it that, are about is actually even like defining what a crypto wallet should be and could be. Clearly, there's a lot of people that are trying to go down this sort of social route, where like adding in social features, following, and this sort of thing. I think that's clearly something that we're thinking about at Zerion in terms of what the Zerion wallet becomes, but I think that's probably, I don't know, I think that's a little limiting in and of itself.
I think that there's a lot about like openness and interconnect-ability or like inter-connectivity with wallets that needs to be there. Like, you need to be able to... One of the best things about MetaMask that everybody knows is like, "Oh, I'm on a new dApp, connect my MetaMask wallet and I can go and use this dApp." So like any wallet has to have that piece kind of figured out too. I also made the analogy earlier talking about this idea of like a crypto backpack, like a wallet is your crypto backpack. And I think that's really sort of very important to this sort of like next wave of the wallet wars as well, which is like, you can't leave stuff behind, like it really has to contain everything that is part of what makes you you in this Web 3 environment. And I think that's where a lot of current wallets either struggle or put up barriers, right?
Because like, I mean, even with MetaMask, as big as they are, you have to manually add networks and tokens all the time. You don't want have to do that. You just want to be able to get going and use it. You want to be able to make sure that there's peace of mind. And like, I know. I put it in my backpack, right? Like, is it there? I think most people have sort of had that like, that stress after they've done a transaction or done something, that's super specific, but when they've executed a transaction in crypto, it's like, "Did it happen? Did I do it right? Oh my God, why is it taking so long? What's going on? Why isn't it there? I don't see my money. It disappeared." All these sort of like anxiety filled moments that probably many of the people listening have experienced. And I think that wallets have to do a much better job of like easing those kind of anxieties. And I think that just adding social features or social aspects to wallet alone, it doesn't do a good enough job of that. There's got to be more there.
Inter-connectivity is one of them. I think the completeness and the idea of having everything accessible to you in one location is also really appealing. And then I think the social aspect as well, because part of the appeal of NFTs in this emerging world that we all are in is the fact that it's a lot about forging your own identity, this new identity for yourself. It's the reason why Crypto Texan can be Crypto Texan. And you should be able to bring all of what that means completely under your control with you at all times. And that to me has got to be a key piece of the, sort of winning the wallet wars. I don't know, we're still defining what that means at Zerion. And I think that's okay. But for us, it's a lot about sort of combining those three elements, I think. The completeness, the fact that every everything is at your disposal, the fact that it's open, and then also that there's like, I guess some social elements added in as well.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. And I've been guilty on this call of calling Zerion a wallet. And I know that it's not, but you look at the website and the app, and it's so smooth and it has the feel of a wallet, right? But-
Alexander Guy: It does, right?
Crypto Texan: ... but I'm connecting my MetaMask, which is my actual wallet to the app. But then I think maybe, I don't know if you agree with this, but I feel like maybe a pretty good Web 2 or analog comparison would be like you're... I mean, you are like an aggregator of DeFi and Web 3 applications, right? So you're kind of bringing all those to the surface, almost like Google search, right? Because you've got the deep web, which is... And what Google search shows you is really just like 1% of what the internet actually is, of what the web is. And that's what you all are doing. You all are kind of digging into the depths of the blockchain to bring the most legit DeFi protocols for people to interact with. Is that a good way to put it?
Alexander Guy: Yeah. I think that's a really clear and pretty good description. The other thing I should say, and this I know is going to happen with the Zerion wallet, it's like, we don't, I don't know, we don't need people who may create a wallet with Zerion to get rid of all their other wallets, if that makes sense. Like, we don't need you to make Zerion the only wallet that you have. The reality is that there are multiple, many reasons why someone would have many wallets and we don't really want that to go away. So, like I mentioned before that you can currently track all of your wallets in one portfolio over view, sort of as like one giant portfolio over view, and that's going to continue to be the case when we have our Zerion wallet, it just kind of is going to act as like a, I don't know, we've talked about the term of like wallet aggregator.
It's not a particularly sexy term and I don't think you'll see it in our copy, but it's a good description, I think of like what we're trying to go for, which is basically like, we want you to be able to experience this Web 3 world the way you want to experience it. And if that means that you move every asset you have into the Zerion wallet and like make that your default wallet, fine. But otherwise, you don't have to do that. And so like, we sort of want this experience in the way that the wallets work, as you say, kind of is like an aggregator concept so that you can basically just make the right decisions for you and make the most of intelligent decisions for what you want to do.
And so I think that the Google comparison is an interesting one. We talk a lot about Google. I don't know, we've also sort of talked about the notion of like Zerion as a browser, right? Because in theory, you can access anything within this Web 3 space. And that's kind of key to what we're trying decide. We ultimately have shied away from that sort of terminology, because we don't think it actually encompasses all of what we want to try to do. But I think that a good way to think about Zerion is like, we want to try to aggregate a lot of services on one place while protecting user privacy and opening up like options. We talk a lot about like exploration and discovery, right? We want our users to be able to explore Web 3 and really, really, really do that in an easy way, while also kind of, I guess, like choosing their own adventures.
We don't want people to sort of have to make sacrifices or compromises where there shouldn't be. So like, the way that you set up your crypto footprint, whether that's with 10 wallets, a hundred wallets or one, that's kind of up to you and we want to enable that. So it's more about discovery and exploration, I think, than like, I don't know, defining one set of user experiences and saying, "That's what we're going to do." We really want to make it like a playground maybe is a good way to put it. Good analogy.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. And when you all are looking at L2 and other side chains, or just other chains in general to implement, are you all looking solely at EVM compatible? Or are you all looking outside the Ethereum universe?
Alexander Guy: Currently, we have prioritized EVMs. So right now we support tracking and trading for, let's see if I can get them all right. Gnosis chain, Avalanche, Optimism, Arbitrum, Binance and Polygon and obviously Ethereum, but we are currently exploring a couple of non-EVM chains. So like, I don't want to give away the barn, but like we're definitely exploring Solana and integrating Solana, which is going to be a big deal for us, I think. And I think we're also open to the idea, I don't know, I mean, it's not one in our road map, but like Tezos for the NFT side is like really interesting.
We're looking at a number of different chains and I think that we've prioritized EVM for very important reasons, but I don't think that's... We sort of want to adapt to what the market is telling us, right? If there's tons and tons of users and tons and tons of volume on a specific chain, we don't want to ignore it because it's not EVM, but it's been the way we've prioritized so far. And I think it was the right decision, but now I think we're probably opening it up a little bit. Although beyond Solana, I don't have any hot takes.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. The Tezos ecosystem is just kind of, from an NFT perspective is really just its own kind of thing. And I've noticed that a lot more recently than... I probably should have been paying attention sooner, but. I also want to know a little off topic, what protocols or projects are out there right now that you've just been kind of keeping your eye on that you think are innovative or really interesting?
Alexander Guy: So I'm not going to lie. My interests lately have been very NFT-focused. I don't know. It kind of like got sucked back into that, the thing that brought me here in the first place. There are a number of different NFT projects that are emerging, like I would call them like in like the mystical realm. So like, obviously Crypto Coven is, when I say that, probably the one that people think about the first, but there's this really awesome NFT project that I've been interacting with called The Well Collective, it hasn't even released the NFTs yet, but they're going to shortly. The minting is shortly. And basically it's like Tarot Cards. So like, I wouldn't consider myself a particularly superstitious or spiritual person, but the kind of story, the founder, who's a pretty famous-ish artist. The art that they've been working on in general, I think it's just really, really cool. And I love the idea of thinking about like wild out of the box NFT use cases and then like figuring out how that can be applied in the digital and blockchain kind of environment.
So The Well Collective is a pretty interesting one. You could check it out. I really like what they're working on. On the protocol side of things, I have been really interested, maybe it's because... So I'm Paris-based and maybe this is because these guys are French, but the Angle Protocol, I don't know if you've heard about these guys. They're still a little under the radar, I feel like, but, I don't know. Maybe their Discord is active enough that they're not even... I'm not like breaking any alpha to you all, but I think that Angle Protocol is basically... They're trying to do like stable coins, but like linked to the Euro to like oversimplify what they're working on.
And I think that they're pretty cool. Like, they're really trying to do a lot around this over-collateralization as well, which I think is increasingly something that people are caring about. Angle is pretty cool. I like them. And their team is really strong and encourage people to at least check out what they're working on their project. I guess like just one really, really quick NFT one that I can shout out one more time, is the people at Catalog. So Catalog is a music NFT, kind of like auction house, for lack of a better term, but basically musicians post their songs or publish their songs as NFTs, and then people bid on them and can buy them. And in the meantime, you can listen to all the artists in the sort of like, I guess in the short term and I've been trying, they're pretty expensive, but I've been trying to gear up to actually buy my first music NFT.
Because I, I think I mentioned before that, I just really think that the idea of really rewarding a creator who's put a lot into a specific work of art or in this case, music is just really like, I love that concept. And on Catalog, one of the things they can do really well is the artist will like write a lot about what they were thinking about when they were creating this piece of music or what was inspiring them or, all this kind of stuff. And you get a sense that you're almost having a real conversation with an artist, which is really fantastic kind of in this age of like endless streaming on Spotify and other things. I don't want to pick on Spotify because it's great at product, but I think that I really enjoy the fact that with Catalog, I can feel like I'm developing a relationship with these artists, even if I'm not buying them yet.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. It really does kind of create like a more personal relationship between the listener and the artist, which I think is very unique to this space right now. And yeah, I always just like to give the guests a chance to show just some kind of random projects that they've been looking at because there's always so much going on in the space, it's impossible to keep track. So just hearing about the Angle Protocol, I've never heard of that. So I'll definitely be looking into that one.
Alexander Guy: Yeah. I'll send you the link to their Discord. I think that they've got some people behind it who are like pretty big deal people, which is good always when you're looking at a protocol or like a project in general, but it's not the only criteria. I don't know. I'll think about some more maybe, that seem exciting. I should say, just to shout out one, it's not really a project, it's a community. I don't know if people know Lito Coen, but he leads project called Crypto Testers, which is a website, it's a Discord channel, it's a, basically a media platform. And their whole goal is to educate people about DeFi and Web 3 and crypto. And I just think he does a fantastic job of creating content, or it's not just him, but the whole community does a great job of creating content to sort of educate.
And I very much believe that we're still at the stage where, especially if we believe that a lot of us are advanced beginners, as I think I mentioned before, it's like finding high quality, good content for free, that teaches you how to do and how to think about all this stuff, is still kind of challenging. And the Crypto Testers team does a great job. So I just want to shout them out too.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. That sound like one definitely worth checking out as well. Well, Alexander, we're up on time. So I'll just kind of let you say where can people go to find out more about you and Zerion?
Alexander Guy: Sure. So me, I'm pretty active on Twitter. You can find me @AlexanderGuy19, G-U-Y, and then just the number 19. Happy to interact, send me a DM, be happy to chat and answer any questions. Zerion, I really want to encourage you to head to app.zerion.io. You can connect your wallet, or in fact, if you don't want to connect your wallet right away, you can connect like any wallet or ENS address that you know and you can start watching some whales and see what they're buying. So head to app.zerion.io and connect your wallet and get started.
Crypto Texan: Well, Alexander, this has been great. I'm a big fan of Zerion. And when I first... It's just one more side note, the first time I connected my wallet to Zerion, I discovered an LP position that I had just completely forgot about. So that was a nice little surprising two grand that I found. So appreciate the protocol.
Alexander Guy: It's actually, I don't want to extend the conversation, but it's actually a pretty common story where like, "Oh yeah, I connected my wallet to Zerion and I immediately saw all this money that I had." It's I think another drawback of some of the other wallets out there, but it's not an uncommon story. So I'm glad you found a... It's like the digital equivalent of like finding a $20 bill on your pants or something like that.
Crypto Texan: Yeah. That's pretty much it. Yeah, exactly. All right. Yeah. Well, this has been great. Thanks to everyone in the audience who's listening live. Alexander, thanks for coming on the show. This is being recorded, and so we'll get this mixed and then sent out here in about a week. Have a great rest of your-
Alexander Guy: Thank you very much.
Crypto Texan: Yep. I appreciate, Alexander. Have a good one.
Alexander Guy: You too. Bye-bye.
Host: @Crypto_Texan
Audio Engineer/Mixing: @LloveraFrank
Marketing Image: @crypto_diller_
Transcript: @0xMitzy / @Crypto_Texan
Conversations with the Coop - Alexander Guy - Zerion